


The Truth to What She Said

by jiemba



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Domestic Violence, F/F, Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Pining, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2018-12-04 04:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11547807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiemba/pseuds/jiemba
Summary: A collection of Sanvers prompt fills from tumblr - some sexy, some angsty, some joyful. Send me prompts on tumblr @jiemba anytime : )





	1. Inertia (Maggie watching Alex)

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked:  
> Could you write something about Maggie watching Alex work in the lab, if you're taking prompts? Your fics are freaking amazing, I enjoy reading everything you write!

**First prompt - yay! Thanks anon, hope I did OK : )**

In between getting her stitches done and signing her discharge forms, there's not a whole lot to do but wait.  
  
She remembers being shot how an ocean remembers a tempest - complete upheaval in the moment, but now everything's stilling, quieting, in a way that's almost as dizzying as the original chaos, and the floor tilts when she tries to rise to meet it, and her elbow buckles against the bed, and every light in the room is suddenly too much to bear.  
  
"Woah, easy," she hears Alex murmur, gently pushing her down by her uninjured shoulder. "Those painkillers can knock you around a bit."  
  
"No kidding," Maggie groans, wincing a little. She glances down at her shoulder, the place where moments earlier Alex had done tender violence to her skin, sewing together ripped flesh with the precision of a scientist, the care of an friend.  
  
It seems, with work and with women, Alex Danvers is nothing if not exact.

She's glad, at least, that she had been lucid for that part. To feel the pride when Alex spoke about coming out to her mom. To feel the warmth of her fingertips, a mirage upon the desert of her skin.  
  
"Just stay a little longer, so I know you aren't having a bad reaction. I promise you'll be home with a pile of tiramisu and re-runs of The Wire in no time."  
  
She tries to settle, hearing Alex continue to scribble notes at her desk. Even with her eyes closed, the room somehow keeps spinning, spinning. "What do you think, Doc?" she teases. "Do I at least get a cookie for being a good patient?"  
  
"Good patients don't usually try to get out of bed when they're told to rest." The scratchy pen sound is replaced by a pattering of keys, the sound doubly irritating. "Do you have someone I can call, to watch you at home?"  
  
"Don't worry about it," Maggie mutters. "It would have been my ex, but you know, since I'm a sociopath and all..." She cracks open an eyelid to glance at her bandage, her marked shoulder somewhere beneath, and chuckles. "Guess I look like one now, fresh scar and everything."  
  
"Maggie..."  
  
"It's fine. She never did like my scars anyway."  
  
She hears Alex sigh over her typing. "Well you already know I think she's an idiot."  
  
Maggie smirks, squints at the back of Alex's head as she keeps working. "You are getting soft on me, Danvers."  
  
The next while passes in a haze, a buzz through Maggie's brain humming like a baseline as she pretends to rest, sneaking glances at Alex. She's never really sat back and watched her like this before, never seen how subtly yet powerfully she runs the room with command and respect. How she's somehow soft and hard in equal measure. How she stands a little taller, her voice a little stronger, her hands on her hips, directing agents, mapping out plans of defence.  
  
How she always makes sure the intern isn't just photocopying. How she thanks everyone from the Director to the cleaners for their work. How she's clearly always the first to arrive and the last to leave, working that little bit extra so everyone can get home to their partners, their kids, their dogs.  
  
Alex probably doesn't even go home to a goldfish, and it's been a while since a thought's made Maggie as sad, or as confused.  
  
It strikes her that Alex doesn't know that she's beautiful, or brave, or a good person - but she is. God, she is - and Maggie's hands feel inexplicably empty, her body flushing with heat at the thought of giving her something to come home to, of feeling her moans roll into her mouth.  
  
Of kissing her acid burns after long days in the lab, of waking to the smell of her hair on her pillow.  
  
Except that it's all some painkiller pipe dream. She knows she's entirely unworthy of her.  
  
Alex, who bites her lip and runs a hand through her hair when she can't quite make sense of an equation, when the chemical composition of a substance just doesn't add up.  
  
Alex, who treats her lab like the house she grew up in, who doesn't just leave her test tubes in the sink for some lowly assistant to clean.  
  
Alex, who's currently counselling an exhausted junior agent in the corner, assuring him that he performed well under pressure - that he's still learning, just like she's always still learning. That it's not that he's weak, it's just supposed to be hard. That she's scared all the time too. That nobody gets better by running away.  
  
Maggie watches her tell him to take all the time he needs, sending him down to collect a self-care allowance from accounting, so he can properly look after himself.  
  
Sights like that are worth the nausea of keeping her eyes open.  
  
Yes, she feels unworthy. Yes, it's all too good to be true.  
  
But a part of her, the innermost part, wonders. Soon enough, even the sound of her own breath echoes with her longing, screams with a quiet desperation, and everything inside her - all fear, all want - is fighting for escape, for _her_ , knocking incessantly at a door that's coming loose at the hinges.  
  
It's been far too long since she's let herself feel a thing, too long since she's loved, that her chest is tight with the fear of it.  
  
Cowardice doesn't come naturally to her. Pain, yes. But not the fear. If she lets herself love Alex Danvers, she wants to feel it everywhere. She wants her to kiss her lips bloody, to grip her hard and prove that she's alive. If Alex loves her back, she wants to burn alive in that white heat, wants the light of it to blind her.  
  
Because eventually, Alex would see beneath the shine, see the guts of her, and never forgive her for it.  
  
But the dulled sting in her shoulder reminds her of how close she came to never kissing another girl again, to never seeing the sky again, to never feeling Alex's hands cradling her face again, and for a moment she actually deludes herself into thinking it's something she could deserve.  
  
Maybe. Maybe.  
  
Nothing like getting shot to change your perspective.  
  
Her hands shake. She needs a fucking scotch.  
  
"Danvers, I feel fine," she mutters, slowly pushing herself up by her good arm. "I should get out of your hair."  
  
"Hold on," she insists. "Any dizziness? Nausea? Rashes?"  
  
Her voice wears the shade of her concern, and Maggie has to turn her face away. "Good as new."  
  
"I know you probably want a drink when you get home, but you might want to take it easy on those meds."  
  
"Gee, you're no fun, Danvers."  
  
When Alex smirks, Maggie senses it rather than sees it. She's still trying to slip her jacket on. Slowly. Slowly.  
  
"Are you sure there's no one I can call? Wouldn't kill you to let someone look after you for a change, Sawyer."  
  
For a moment, Maggie holds the fragile gaze between them like a newborn. But she shakes her head anyway. "Better on my own."  
  
A young agent interrupts to hand Alex a report, and she turns to Maggie before she's pulled away again. "As soon as Pam brings your discharge papers, I promise I'll get one of the agents to take you home. I'd drive you myself, but -"  
  
"I know. You're needed here."  
  
Alex pauses a little to glance around the lab, still a little shaken by how much she has to do if she wants to get out before morning. "I'm sorry. I -"  
  
"Don't be. It's...impressive."  
  
And then she's smiling, because in the middle of the workplace she commands, Alex Danvers blushes - she goddamn _blushes_ \- and all Maggie can feel is the heady rush of her own blood under her skin.  
  
That familiar inertia, the feverish pre-trembling before she falls.  
  
Even painkillers can't fake that.  
  
So she nods and sits back, hoping Pam takes her time with those forms. Just so she can watch Alex a little longer. To imagine interrupting her paperwork to bring her coffee. Even better, to imagine interrupting her paperwork to bring her home.


	2. Leaving (Maggie supporting an abuse survivor)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anon: I know you have a million prompts in your inbox but if you ever have time, i'm experiencing a lot of biphobia and violence atm (dw i'm safe and far from my partner right now) and it would mean the world if you ever wrote maggie supporting a young bi girl who comes into the station after being abused by a partner. your fics help me so mmuch thank you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a continuation of @queercapwriting's response to this prompt - you may wish to read chapter 672 of The Girls We Wanna Kiss before reading this chapter. Tw for mentions of abuse, sexual assault

Jacqui checks her phone in 30-second intervals, clockwork regular, but Maggie tries not to show that she’s noticed.

The detective is all too aware that these partners can be a knife in the throat - deadly, but not easily removed - and this girl’s only here on a threadbare tightrope of her own will. So keeps talking, as gently and clearly as she can. Laying out her options. Reminding her that whatever happens next is her choice.

It’s all a dog whistle, really. The only thing the girl hears is the sound of her phone not ringing, the distinct silence a jarring baseline beneath every photocopier, every distant siren.

If Adam were here, he’d probably be poking her ribs until she smacked the hat off his head, calling her a hermit and making some comment about how _‘we get it Jacq, your girlfriend’s a babe, but can you tear yourself away from your phone and grace us with your presence occasionally?’_

Only he doesn’t joke like that anymore. She’s pretty sure he knows. Because whenever she’s on the guys’ dorm floor these days, the corridor walls more deodorant spray than paint, he seems to linger over her name. He offers for her to crash when she says, for the fourth time in two minutes, that she really should be getting home, while never moving towards the door.

He hugs her a little softer when she does leave, not a second before she has to.

Not that she’s supposed to be hugging him at all - and these days, it’s hard to tell embraces from bear traps.

“Jacqui?”

She lifts her eyes, blinking a little at the detective tilting her head towards her. Rushes to say, “I’m sorry.”

Maggie’s lips turn upward almost unnoticeably. “I lost you for a sec there, huh? I know this is a lot to take in.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, her voice outrunning itself. “I was listening, I -”

“Hey, it’s alright,” Maggie tells her, palms opening to the ground, to calm the young girl who looks like she’s sitting before a snake. “I was just explaining that you don’t have to know what you want to do right now. It’s understandable that you’re pretty rattled. But if you’re interested in making a report while you’re here, I can start a file -”

“No,” Jacqui baulks, shrinking impossibly further into her own skin, wishing desperately that she could swallow her disclosure back down into the pit of her gut and never speak of it again. “No charges.”

Maggie nods slowly, taking her in. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” she confirms. “But if you’re worried about being outed, you should know that since you’re over 18 I don’t have to inform your parents that you made a report. It can be between us until you make a decision about what to do next.”

“You don’t get it,” Jacqui exhales. “She’s not… It wasn’t like that. She’s not a bad person.”

Maggie hums out a breath, tilts her head again, eyes soft. She lets the girl breathe, gives her the time to check her phone for missed calls, once, twice, visibly trembling into her chair again, palms grasping and ungrasping the sides, eyelids like cracking levees.

“I know how I sound,” Jacqui mutters eventually, low enough that Maggie almost doesn’t make it out. “But things are really hard for her right now, and she just needs help, and no offence, but cops… They can be…”

Maggie sighs as she tilts back in her chair with a quick glance around the office, almost every other staff member as white as the fucking paper. “Yeah, I feel you there, kiddo.”

“I just don’t want her to get in trouble.”

There’s something in the way the girl says it, shoulders curling inward, that’s so staggeringly familiar, and Maggie wonders if she looked like this when Alex found her crouched on a kitchen stool at 2am, phone in hand, torn between calling her father again and smashing the thing to pieces. “You love her,” Maggie murmurs, and the girl’s head nods against the heels of her hands. “Sweetheart, can you look at me for a moment please?”

Jacqui cracks then, unwittingly whimpering at the request, tears slipping from her eyes without permission and bursting into lines on her palms, because as patient as Maggie is, the words sound too much like fingers around her wrist, like her back slamming against a fridge, like _look at me when I’m fucking talking to you don’t you ever walk away from me._

But Maggie waits, and Maggie doesn’t press her, so she decides to be brave, lifting her eyes and accepting the tissue being handed to her. The detective lays out both of her hands, palms up, if Jacqui wants to take them - she does - and breathes with her for a moment, letting the calm settle into their chests. “Sweetheart I know you don’t want to hurt her. But you being here isn’t betraying her. It’s you looking after yourself. That’s important, and it’s brave.”

The words don’t register. The touch is all too much, and Jacqui’s staring at her own wrists knowing that the indentations on the left one are bruised enough to show up even on her darker skin. That if this detective dusted her arms for fingerprints, she’d find a roadmap of the last week’s fights, all teardrops and hurricanes.

She pulls her hands away.

“You don’t have to think on this too much right now,” Maggie repeats, taking a sip of her own water as if to remind Jacqui that she should probably do the same. “Our priority today is getting you someplace safe.”

The girl hugs herself, and she shakes, and she almost can’t believe that this is happening to her, but she has to ask. “You don’t think I’m stupid?”

Now this girl _really_ reminds her of herself, and Maggie softens when she shakes her head decisively. “No. You’re making a really smart decision right now, telling someone that you’re unsafe. That’s hard as hell to do.”

Jacqui tries to believe her, to hear her over the screaming still ringing in her head - telling her she’s never good enough, never queer enough, never compliant enough - but the gentle assurances don’t quite make it.

“I just… I don’t know what to call this,” she finally admits, wiping her face as the words fall out of her in one rush. “Like, I do, I know it in my head, but I feel like it’d be easier to call it that if a boyfriend did it. I’ve never heard of this happening with girls. And it’s not that bad, it’s not like she’s really hurting me, but she scares me, and I’m always making mistakes, and I know I should be better but I can’t always be better. I know it’d be easier for her if I was like her, if I was gay, so she wouldn’t have to worry about me all the time, but I didn’t… I didn’t even do anything. I promise, I didn’t do anything, but she just loses it sometimes, and normally it’s OK, she always feels terrible and we work it out after, but last night…”

“Last night…” Maggie prompts again, like before.

Jacqui blinks her eyes to the ceiling and shakes her head, simultaneously feeling that none of this is real yet wanting to sob at the pain of what’s clawing its way out of her throat. 

“Jacqui…”

She checks her phone again.

“Sweetheart,” Maggie murmurs, a little firmer now, something deep inside her chest curling into a fist. “What happened?”

They sit for a moment, listening to the grating, whirring sounds of office phones and fax machines and air conditioning that’s too loud for the room. There’s a fire drill poster on the wall and Jacqui reads it twice. She curls a hand around her injured wrist, rubbing her thumb in tiny circles until she finds the words.

"She said I had to prove it. If I really loved her, if I was really into girls, I had to prove it. And like…it’s not what you think, she didn’t force me, but…”

“You couldn’t say no.”

She nods. Picks a loose string from the rip in her jeans.

She can’t look Maggie in the face, but her eyes watch the woman try to keep her hands from curling into themselves, twisting her engagement ring around, around, with the thumb of the same hand. It’s somehow both unsettling and calming, to see how this woman grounds herself in her future wife like it’s the only thing she knows how to do. How her heart seeks her out, when something dark comes to wear the skin around her eyes.

“Jacqui,” she murmurs, and it strikes the girl that Maggie uses her name. “I know the big words can be scary to hear. I get that. It can be really rough, calling things what they are. But putting someone in a position where they’re too fearful to say no isn’t consent. Getting so angry they feel they have to trade sex for safety isn’t consent. Emotionally coercing them by demanding sex as proof of something isn’t consent. It’s assault. It’s not OK, and it’s not legal, and it’s not your fault, and she should never have done that to you.”

“It hardly ever happens though,” Jacqui weeps, barely above a whisper.

“It shouldn’t happen at all.” Maggie releases a breath, leans her elbows on her knees. “I know everything feels jumbled in your head right now, but what happened is real. You’re real. You didn’t go through all the trouble of learning yourself and coming out only to end up in a relationship like this. You deserve a safe, supportive, amazing relationship, with a partner that loves that you’re bi, not someone who treats it like it’s something to endure. You being able to love lots of different kinds of people - that’s not inherently threatening. It’s beautiful. You shouldn’t ever have to apologise for that, OK? It’s just the way you are.”

Jacqui tries to nod, but again it falls away into a shrug. She settles for wiping her eyes.

”Sorry I’m late,” she hears behind her. 

A reddish-haired woman strides into the office, a little breathless but pizza box in hand, and Jacqui’s heart twinges, because _my god, she’s beautiful_ , and of course Maggie’s ended up with someone like her.

“All good, babe,” Maggie assures her with a quick kiss to her cheek. Jacqui’s eyes widen, already having braced herself for someone else’s explosion. “This is Jacqui - Jacqui, this is my fiancée Alex.”

“Nice to meet you,” the woman says to her, outstretching her hand, and Jacqui takes it gingerly, almost in too much disbelief to say hi back. The peace of their interaction is a revelation. 

But Maggie’s straight back in detective mode, sitting gently again as Alex sets the pizza on the table. “Alex doesn’t have to eat with us, if you want us to keep talking alone. But my brainy fiancée here is a doctor, among other things. She can take a look at you, if you’re hurt. Would you like that?”

Jacqui glances up, noticing Alex’s face soften with worry, her eyes looking her over without trying, picking up on the slightly swollen cheek bone, the way she almost unnoticeably favours her ribs on the left side. “I’m OK,” Jacqui assures her. “It’s not that bad.”

Maggie wants to tell her that it _is_ bad, that it’s inexcusable, that part of her would take great pleasure in arresting her shitty excuse for a partner, but for now she makes space for Alex and opens the pizza box.

“Do you want me to leave you guys?” Alex checks. “I’m totally cool with grabbing a slice and saying hi to Kima if she’s around.”

“You can stay if you want,” Jacqui murmurs, trying not to give away how desperately she hopes she does. Because already, the tenderness between these two is so clear, so warm, that every glance is a picture of the relationship that she doesn’t have, that she could maybe, one day, come close to deserving. She hopes.

So Alex smiles, and grabs a chair, and bickers with Maggie over the choice of topping, their conversation all little grabs of _give me a break, pineapple on pizza is so not as bad as vegan ice cream_ and _yeah whatever, Danvers, call me when you learn how not to burn water_ and _plain bagels for breakfast isn’t cooking either you tasteless weirdo_. It’s entirely unfamiliar, this ease with which they seem to calm each other, and it hits Jacqui then, all at once, how upset she’d be if Alex ever did anything to Maggie that came even close to what’s become so everyday for her.

She tries not to think about it, letting herself smile a little when they drag her into the pineapple debate and Alex begs her to take her side, Maggie conceding defeat. “Fine. You can have my pineapples, kiddo,” the detective huffs, picking them off into a little pile on the cardboard. 

When the girl reaches for them, her hands tremble a little. “Maggie?”

“Mmm?”

”Can we… Would you be able to come with me after this? To pick up my stuff?”

When Maggie smiles as she wipes the grease from her fingers, there’s so much gentle pride in it that Jacqui wants to cry again. “Of course we can. Whatever you need.”

“Anytime,” Alex agrees, reaching to squeeze Maggie’s hand a little, but never taking her eyes off Jacqui. 

The girl chews her lip, scratching a smear of tomato off her thumb to try and stop herself from shaking. 

“I should have left earlier,” she whispers. 

A hand opens itself for her to take, and her vision’s too blurry to tell whose it is as she bows her head, squeezes tight. 

“You’re leaving now.”

And for a moment, Jacqui just breathes. She lets herself be held, lets herself feel safe under the watch of these older women in her community - already forming a protective chain around her as best they can, waiting, as long as she needs, until she’s ready. 

For the rest of her slice, she doesn’t check her phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those who follow me on tumblr (@jiemba) will know this is quite a personal story for me. If you'd like to get in touch about anything that's going on for you, please do.


End file.
